


soft tender bodies

by kuro49



Series: small town murder mystery 'verse [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Buried Alive, M/M, Multi, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-13 23:05:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16481465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: Gotham is a burial ground for secrets, and Tim goes digging.





	soft tender bodies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stevieraebarnes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stevieraebarnes/gifts).



> this was written in a lot of short start-stop bursts before i thought it was a good idea to try to get it done for halloween at 2pm the day before. 
> 
> special dedication to [stevieraebarnes](https://stevieraebarnes.tumblr.com/) for being one of the most supportive and lovely person in the jaydick fandom. ;D

 

Gotham is a burial ground for secrets.

And Tim goes digging because he cannot live with not knowing. This is probably a fundamental flaw to his character, but he doesn’t stop even if he should. Good judgement hasn’t been on the table for a good long while now when he leads the life that he does.

He goes back ten years into the archives when he finds it.

 

When the final cardboard box containing the last of his belongings is emptied out, Tim realizes he is home in more ways than one.

He sees the editions of his fourth year courses’ textbooks that have gone unsold lining the bottom shelf of the bookcase, displacing some of Jason’s worn paperbacks to get double stacked wherever there is room (there isn’t, not really). He can pick out his favourite mug with a new chip in the ceramic sitting among the drying rack, smell his brand of instant coffee in the contained space of the kitchen, find his sweater lying underneath Dick’s uniform on the sofa.

"There hasn't been a story worthy of the front page of the Gotham Gazette for years now."

Dick and Jason keep reminding him that he's already got the job at the Gotham Gazette but casually going through years and years and years worth of the local newspaper headlines, Tim calls it what it is: Research.

"You can't say that when Lian was born last year." Jason calls out from where he is lying across the length of the sofa, Dick sprawled out on top of him, their legs tangled, their arms falling off of the edge. The television is playing some home renovation show that only Dick is half-watching, closer to falling asleep than hearing that tip on how to ensure the varnish stays on longer.

It is a day off for all three of them and it’s nice like this when there aren’t any plans. They can fool around underneath the sheets until it is mid-morning, taking it slow and sweet until Jason breaks first and brings them breakfast in bed.

“That’s bias, and you know it.”

Dick laughs lightly at Tim's words, lifting up his head from where it rested on Jason’s chest, and Tim can see the imprints of the wrinkles in Jason’s t-shirt against the side of Dick’s face. It is ridiculous that he finds it as endearing as he does.

“If Jay could bring Lian up in every conversation, he would.” Dick reaches a hand out to tousle Jason’s hair, runs it through the strands of dark and tangles his fingers against the shock of white despite the half-hearted protests coming from the man underneath him. “And he does.”

“I’m her godfather.”

And it is with the fondest smiles that Dick and Tim echo one another when they say.

“We _know_.”

 

The history Dick and Jason have is deep.

The common knowledge is that they were brothers before they were lovers, and even with this simple fact, Tim knows there is more than just that.

The underlying unfairness lies here, and Tim doesn't need to say it out loud to know it in his heart when this is a familiarity that he cannot begin to compete with. There is no fault to be placed, not when he fits into them in a different way. Tim can ask, and he probably should. He just isn’t sure he wants to know the answers yet, not when the warning signs are all there.

 

Before the first death and every subsequent ones to follow, Dick has never quite understood the feelings working itself out of him. He hardly even begins to make sense of the experience.

The year Dick Grayson gets into the Gotham Police Department, his brother goes missing.

 

On Dick’s night shifts, Tim finds himself staring blankly at length of Jason's back in a bed that is feeling bigger and bigger by the minute.

“I can hear the wheels grinding there, baby bird. What's keeping your mind occupied like that?”

“I’m thinking.” Tim starts, going starfish across the mattress, filling in the empty spaces until only his fingertips brush the dip of Jason's spine, “about before." His toes barely prodding at Jason's calf, he explains. "Before me, I mean.”

“What’re you trying to figure out?”

Tim draws out a long low hum, thinks about all the ways he can put his thoughts into words when he is still trying to wrap his head around his will, and how easily it breaks for them every time he goes to bend every rule before they ever even have to ask.

“You and Dick lived your whole lives in this town. I’m wondering about what came before I did.”

The blanket atop feels like it could squeeze the breath out of them both. Tim knows the answer before Jason gives it.

“Let me give you some advice.”

This reminds them both of a conversation they had before in this same bed.

“I’ll consider that as a compromise.”

Tim knows a _no_ when he hears it. But he also knows Jason doesn’t have a mean bone in him. That the man would rather gut himself wide open than have either of them get hurt in his place. Jason has never once been cruel just because. When he turns over, shifts into the crook of Tim's outstretched arm and waits that patient second for Tim to curl it around him until there isn’t even a sliver of space between them.

“Don’t go digging, Tim.” Head tucking into the curve of Tim's neck, eyes closing in the dark, Jason murmurs, sincerity in every word. “You won’t like what you find.”

 

Someone calls for a volunteer search party.

Dick is standing in the field with grass that grows to the height of his waist. This is where Jason was last seen, on his way home from school despite Alfred's insistence that the long line of cars sitting in the Wayne Manor garage isn't just for show. There is no wind but the grass sways, and the fog that settles is thick and wet with the smell of rot when he remembers to breathe in.

His flashlight is not much help, a beam of faded yellow that barely keeps the uneven ground five steps in front of him illuminated. His brain works in circles, trying to find a motive where there is none.

His limited range of vision keeps caution at his throat. It is cold and the slow rising panic permeates.

They can scream his name raw, but they don’t find anything.

 

"You knew I was going to find out."

Given enough time, Jason knows Tim could figure it all out. Jason has his hands wrapped around a mug, steam rising from its contents as he stands there by the window, bare feet. "Eventually."

"Would it be unreasonable if I tell you these are the kind of things I don't want to just come across?"

There are lengths they could have gone through to hide this from him but they _don't_. Tim isn’t angry, he is barely even mad but he just wishes—

“I don’t know where it is but there’s a box in this town I was buried in.” Jason says and here is where their confrontation goes both ways. Jason doesn’t have most of his memories and Tim doesn't have all of the facts. "I was missing for three days, don't recall most of it. Walked back to the manor all on my own with head trauma, some broken fingers, and a chest infection, but—" Jason is holding his breath and when he finally says this, it almost sounds like it could be the truth. "It doesn't really matter, it's fixed now.”

Tim walks up next to him, leans on him, recognizes this for what it is. Jason is spelling out the worst of Dick's deeds, the one where he was selfish beyond anything else. Tim leans up on his tip toes and presses his mouth across Jason’s temple before settling against his side.

One more line between them blurred into non-existence.

“You never wanted to know?” Tim asks, gently when the both of them are settled into the depths of the sofa, Dick's favourite throw blanket covering them both. They are waiting for Dick to come home within the hour, dinner sitting in the oven.

There are empty spaces in his head, and Jason is glad for it. He finishes off the last of his tea, the heat of it long gone.

“Some things are better off buried.”

 _But not you_. Tim wants to say but the words never really make that leap off of the tip of his tongue, not even when Jason ducks his head down to kiss it from the hollow of his mouth.

 

Trauma exists like a bad dream that comes night after night.

There is static playing in his ears in the silence that gets louder and louder until even his own harsh breathing seems to disappear all together. The earth is damp, is soft, and the rain makes it heavy enough to have the wood cave in on itself. His makeshift grave is deep, is shallow, and it hurts to breathe in the dark when the earth finally closes down on top of him.

 

Three days later, Jason is found.

The terrace doors are wide open behind him, blowing the fallen leaves from the yard in. There is mud on his clothes, dirt in his hair, and dried blood flaking dark brown down the side of his head. Alfred finds him standing in the middle of the manor kitchen like he is looking to fix himself a midnight snack despite looking like he’s been through the wringer.

“Master Jason?”

“Hey Alfie," he says even as the alarms he's triggered is still blaring in the background. "I was hoping I would get in quiet enough that I wouldn't wake you.”

“That's quite all right, my boy.” Alfred tells him, gesturing him further inside where it is warm, and Jason hasn't realized how cold he feels. “You want to take a seat for me while I fix you something to eat?”

“Can I help?”

“How about you let me take care of everything just this time? Let an old man feel useful.”

Jason looks at Alfred for one long moment. He doesn’t know why this sensation of being lost comes to mind, he is _home_. He thinks. It feels a lot like he is only allowed to squint at one corner and being told to describe the whole picture. But he has never once been one to deny Alfred Pennyworth anything if he asked anything of him. And he is asking now.

“If you insist, Alfie.”

“I do, Master Jason.”

He takes a seat at the kitchen table, puts his hands in his lap, and doesn’t get the chance to look down to see the state of his broken and bloody fingertips before he slumps over when the adrenaline finally runs out.

 

The years after, Dick is protective and there is no secret to that.

 

Two miles north of the Wayne Estate, just off of the single designated hiking path where the branches of the trees hang low and the bushes grow wild and unkempt, the shovel he brings with him goes unused. Ten years is a long time even when it feels barely long enough.

In a place where time hardly passes, Tim finds what he goes looking for.

He is on the phone with Dick, his boots caked with mud. The thin drizzle falling has his hair plastered against his forehead but underneath the thick canopy of branches and evergreen needles, the skeletons dragged up from their graves sit, waiting, sheltered from the rain. This is the closest he's been to the Wayne Estate and he is not sure he wants to get any closer.

“I didn't think I’d find it, Dick, _believe_ me.”

Dick does, he believes him with his entire heart. But there is still the case of what to do with knowledge of this scale even if there is not a lick of malicious intent in this.

"Want me to come get you?"

It is a hole in the ground with a broken crate, looking haphazardly built when the rusty nails are still jagged and only half embedded inside of the cracked planks of wood. It is a shallow grave but it still sits far deeper than Tim imagined it could. There is the growth of green life around it but not in it, like it knows the horror that happened here, and when he shakes, he thinks it shows when he speaks.

"Are you going to tell Jay?"

Over the phone, Tim's voice is tiny like he is speaking into a tin can, sounding tortured like this is what will break him.

"Only if you want me to."

And as unfair as it is, Dick is not above keeping secrets to protect either one of them. It is a good thing Tim doesn't think that way, the last wavering arm on their moral compass when Dick has broken his into halves. Tim believes in the truth in ways neither Jason nor Dick knows how to do anymore.

"I think I do." Tim tells him and breathes out that heavy scent of rot in the air from his lungs, steels himself for making the cut that bleeds.

"Alright," Dick says with conviction he doesn't feel, "then we do." He is standing by them both with whatever decision they will make. "Hang tight, Timmy. I'll be there in twenty."

 

Home is where the heart is.

And Tim is shown to the very last secret Gotham holds to hers.

 

Sitting on one of the workbench surfaces, the midday silence is filled with the latest earworm playing from the radio. Jason is still in the garage, grease on his hands and smeared across his clothes when he finally crawls out from underneath one of the cars lined up in the shop.

Tim is dripping water on the concrete, Dick is still in his uniform, and Jason doesn't need to go looking to know he walked out of a shift for this even if he has no idea what it is yet. 

"I'm sorry, Jay." Tim rushes out before anything else, arms extended before he is taking the steps necessary to draw their distance until there is no room between them. Tim wraps his arms around his waist until he is clutching on to him. "I didn't listen and I went. I couldn't leave it alone, and I found it even if you didn't want me to."

Dick is standing on the side, looking at them with _worry_ , and Jason knows exactly what Tim is talking about even if he doesn't ever give him any of the details.

The narrative here starts full of holes.

Blank spaces in place of memories. Bad dreams filling up every fitful night. Screams swallowed right down whole instead of coming forward with the truth to get to a place much like peace when the sheets are not shredded in the morning and his thin shirt isn't soaked in sweat. Here is a flaw in the system, a cold case that never went into the books with the details that it should have. Because when there is no body and he has no proof to any of it even when it is the truth, there is nothing to be brought to justice.

The year Jason Todd-Wayne turns fifteen, he disappears.

Since then, healing hasn't worked the way it probably should for him when it is murder that finally keeps the ghosts down for good.

Jason has long since learned to work with a corner, hands behind his back, gag in his mouth, and the dark burning into his opened eyes. He has no inclination to shine a light on any of those missing pieces just to see the whole picture. He is happy with what he has when this is far more than what he's imagined he could have. Sometimes, it is the kindest thing. Sometimes, it is the cruelest thing when he does this for him.

This probably isn't the sane reaction but he ducks down and presses his nose into the top of Tim's head to murmur with something a lot like embarrassment.

“You’re a romantic, Timothy Drake.”

Jason never once saw things from his baby bird's perch. The burning need to know, to share a burden even when it isn't his to bear.

“Says the man with Jane Austen’s entire bibliography on hand.” Tim tips his head up, eyes rimmed in red, rainwater dripping off of him like tears, to point this out. His knuckles going white when he squeezes Jason tight, mouth turning upwards to match Jason's expression, lines at the corner of his eyes. Dick breathes out a ragged little laugh, sinking down against the hood of the car Jason was under with relief.

“Touché, baby bird.”

 

They try to keep Tim from all this at arm's length but when another line between them is wiped clean, they can't help it.

Their smiles go soft.

 


End file.
